All eyes on the European Union summit
The drama in Greece is once again front and centre, with the possibility of a stalemate increasingly reflected in markets. Spanish, Portuguese and Italian bond markets all lost ground yesterday, due to fears of contagion. This morning, we learned that the German ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment, which measures investor confidence, dropped sharply in May from 41.9 to 31.5. This is now the third month in a row that German investor confidence has declined.
As if that weren’t enough bad news out of Europe, it is now being reported that Greek officials intend to request a 6-month extension before paying back 1.55 billion euros to the IMF. It would certainly appear that Greek Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis are playing down the likelihood that the EU will show them the door.
In the meantime, U.S. Housing Starts and Building Permits for May will be announced this morning. On our side of the border, International Securities Transactions data will be released.
